Griftlands - roguelike RPG battler with Slay the Spire influences by Klei

Griftlands entered Early Access today (yay) but only on the Epic store (boo).

It got a complete content rework (huh) from an open world RPG-ish thing (aww) to a more long roguelike experience (hmm) with strong Slay the Spire influences for the combat (Hell yeah! All the Slay the Spire dislikers can burn in hell - this is a great decision you plebeians).

The different player characters will have different story-quests within the game world. You meet lots of NPCs, making friends and enemies that will interact with you along the way. Characters can die and change in other ways. You gain bonuses and penalties and people will actively help or hinder you, including taking part in battles.
There are two kinds of those, actual punchy battles and negotiations. They have separate decks you each manage Slay the Spire like.
Cards can be upgraded within a choice tree (for instance reducing cost or increasing damage for an attack) after being used a number of times.

You have a choice of quest paths and you can’t do everything in a run. Some quests are combat focused, some are negotiation focused. Many have options for both as alternative solutions or to make the other easier (you might complete an optional negotiation to convince an enemy to not participate in the following battle for instance).

Fights themselves are very Slay the Spire like (but a bit spruced up) for battles and feature more strongly modified version for negotiations.
Besides cards you collect a variety of implants in a limited number of slots that work like Slay the Spire relics.
Combat almost always gives you the option to spare enemies after they surrendered or kill them, with various effects.
As you walk around the game world there are various minor events and random encounters while you do quests.

Mechanically this game seems very complete for a Klei Early Access title. They are lacking more on the content side. Historically Klei has been unprecedentedly exceptional with their EA handling. Griftlands has the usual ingame update timer and will receive notable updates every couple of weeks.

Random youtuber’s EA Let’s Play:

I’ve been really enjoying it, but it gets pretty hard pretty fast

Your “random youtuber” is a favorite of mine. Waiting fo his second video to drop. Not sure how I feel about the “negotiate for better prices” aspect (since it feels like you are adding lots of battles if you do it often), but I guess you don’t have to do that.

I played this at PAX around 2 years ago when they first introduced it as an open world game, and absolutely loved what I saw. So I’m a little bummed that they changed direction, but mostly because I haven’t been able to get into any card-based games.

It’s Klei though so - much like Image & Form with Steamworld Quest - I’ll probably give it a chance and end up loving it despite my reservations!

Complete runs do seem to be quite extensive. Longer than full Slay the Spire runs which can be already pretty demanding. Some fights can drag a bit if you have a mismatched or generally poor deck for certain opponents.
It is more of a complete RPG adventure with saving option instead of a “lunch break roguelike run”.

In the video Wanderbots was learning the game on his first play which extended individual fights even further.

Klei changes a lot in their EA games (including mid and large scale reworks if something doesn’t work) so there is a very good chance pacing and interactions will evolve a decent amount.

Oh, definitely on all counts. Quick question, will this work with just mouse as an interface? Wondering how it would do streaming to my iPad (until the new os is ready for prime time). If my computer were plugged in, I probably would have bought it already.

Yeah it works with just mouse. The only key I used was “e” for a quick end turn instead of clicking the respective button.

when you unlock a new outfit, how does that work? don’t see anywhere to choose them

So it’s a Slaylike Roguelike?

the more I play the more it feels like way too many enemies rely on the mechanic of throwing dead cards in your deck that do either nothing or hurt you. Gets pretty cumbersome pretty fast.

How is Griftlands after a few more months of development? I haven’t heard anything about it recently.

Coming along pretty well in my opinion, they just finished the second of three classes. I’ve been enjoying it and Gordian Quest though both are decidedly in the ‘not done’ state they are both very fun and well polished with what content they have.

Which would you rate as more playable right now? I have picked up Gordian Quest and find what is there pretty enjoyable but am a little worried I am playing it before it is “done enough” to provide the best experience. Griftlands meanwhile remains on my watch and wishlist.

My roguelike card battling appetite is being fully sated in the meanwhile by a combination of Trials of Fire, Nowhere Prophet and Pirates Outlaws. Still, anything new and shiny is shiny and new :-)

Both feel very polished to me already, but I think Griftlands is more ‘complete’ in the sense that they have single character ‘storylines’ and are now done with 2 of the 3 coming. GQ has only chapter 1 available, though it’s several hours of play to go through it still.

Also if you guys like these types of games and aren’t afraid of lesser graphics and overly complex depth and ability to be modded, ‘Erannorth Reborn’ on Steam if pretty good imo.

Agreed.

I played the first in-game day with the starting character. I think I like it. The battles are slay-the-spire-esque (in a good way), but the surrounding game is a neat light rpg. I like the two different decks you have to manage also.

So, the structure of Griftlands is VERY similar to Slay the Spire. There are three characters, each with their own sets of cards. You get 3 energy per turn to play your cards. After each battle, you get a choice of one of three cards to add to your deck. Etc.

A big difference is, you have two decks, a battle deck and a negotiation deck, and each encounter uses one of them. The negotiation battles work pretty differently than regular combats, but combats are not too different from StS. The way you upgrade cards is different, each card gets points when you use it, and at the end of a battle, you can upgrade all your cards that have enough points (each card has two different ways it can upgrade; but each card can only upgrade once. After that, it doesn’t get upgrade points any more).

Instead of a tree you climb to get to the end of each act, you do a series of quests. There are certain quests that appear to be mandatory for each run, and some that are randomly swapped in. But they mostly give you a couple choices of how you want to do the quests (which faction you want to ally with; whether you want to use negotiation or combat, etc). Also, between quests you can always go to the market or the healer, you don’t have to wait for it to pop up. There are 5 acts (“days”) instead of 3.

So on my 3rd try I finished the quest with the first character. I thought, “well, that was kind of easy”, but… it has ascension levels. They call them prestige, but it’s the same thing.

I feel I mentioned almost all of that in the initial post. :p

One important difference to Slay the Spire is that the three characters have completely separate campaigns. They each have their own flow, design, setting, and bosses.

Ascension levels do work a lot like Slay the Spire again. A single level is not too much of a change but as they accumulate the game becomes notably more difficult.

Then I agree with you!

Also, Epic game store just issued another coupon, so you can get Griftlands for $5 (in the US, at least).